Articles Tagged with vworkspace

According to Bloomberg News Dell is in discussions to acquire Quest Software in a bid to strengthen its enterprise software services portfolio. Dell has been shopping, with five acquisitions announced so far this year, to add software, computer storage and networking gear to its lineup of PCs, which account for 52% of its sales. With PC sales flat and margins thin, Dell has been seeking to broaden its services portfolio and directly challenge HP which has suffered multiple missteps in recent months.

OnLive is on the verge of making a game-changing move in the VDI space. The game focused application delivery company announced their OnLive Desktop service at CES this year. OnLive Desktop claims to deliver a seamless Microsoft Windows desktop experience with cloud-accelerated web browsing and full Adobe Flash. The marketing talks of “instant-response multi-touch gestures“, “complete and convenient viewing and editing of even the most complex documents” and “high-speed transfer from cloud storage or Web mail attachments“. Sounds like something a CFO would bite your hand off for.

Still, delivering a ubiquitous desktop environment is a complex undertaking. Desktone tried punting to end users and then thought better of it. The default position when delivering desktops is to deliver a Microsoft Windows workspace: that’s what most users need and want to run their applications. However, a “use any device” model gets hampered by Microsoft’s VDA yearly license cost, and further constrained by the lack of a viable way of policing/validating VDA assignment. VDI can leave an enterprise open to Microsoft beating them with a stick for a host of additional end device licenses.

Have OnLive taken an impressive application delivery model and tried to apply it to windows desktops without necessarily thinking licensing through? Will the scalability and experience that Onlive have mean that VDI vendors should re-think their technology? Will the buzz that OnLive has created mean an new level of engagement with Microsoft, perhaps even a shotgun wedding? Will Onlive Desktop be the technology that prompts Microsoft to get its licensing-of-vdi house in order, properly enabling a Desktop-as-a-Service market: what better way to laugh in the face of Apple than to have most iPads running Windows 8?

There are three fundamental difficulties facing any hosted desktop solution. They are :

1. What to do with the desktops that can’t be virtualised?

2. What to do with the desktops that can’t be virtualised?

and, most importantly,

3. What to do with the desktops that can’t be virtualised?

Of all the vendors in the hosted desktop space, Citrix has been delivering desktop virtualisation solutions the longest. As such, perhaps they are the most aware that an enterprise desktop strategy isn’t about delivering a single solution. A solution needs to be flexible enough to present a variety of services to a range of devices. This isn’t just about having different client support, but about delivering applications and data either to different environments: secure and insecure, managed and unmanaged, fat and thin.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Citrix’s product portfolio is its FlexCast model. Other hosted desktop vendors have a similar option. Some do not.

What is FlexCast? Why is it important to customers? Can a hosted desktop vendor survive without having something similar?

With a little over 28 months left until Microsoft ends all support for Windows XP and with Internet Explorer 6, the time to consider their replacements is long overdue. While Microsoft and others have acted to deliver tools to assist with Windows 7 migration activities little effort has been made to address the challenge of IE 6. One of the others, Quest, has released an IE 6 rescue package. However, if anything, Microsoft’s only visible response has been to act stymie the actions of those withing to offer a solution.

Citrix released their latest Presentation Virtualization solution, XenApp 6, allowing Citrix customers to be able to deploy to deploy to Windows 2008 R2. Competitive Presentation Virtualization vendors have not been idle: Ericom have released 5.7 of their WebConnect RemoteView, Quest have updated vWorkspace to v7.1 and 2x have updated ApplicationServer to 8.1, others are busy at work.

Each of these new releases introduce updated features to their respective environments. Citrix’s better facilitates on demand delivery of servers and power and capacity management. Ericom introduced improved management and integration with RDS and Reverse Seamless functionality. Quest enhance their protocol optimization functions, 2x have introduced additional security features to secure remote connections. With the release of service pack 1 for Windows 2008R2 it is likely it will all change again as each vendor looks to incorporate the new features of Microsoft’s RemoteFX into their offering. With Microsoft introducing features to deliver an improved user experience on the LAN it is likely that the greater innovation will come from improving the user experience for remote access and allowing for improved management and server automation. Yet, all of these solutions rely on a core Microsoft Remote Desktop service solution – you will be deploying applications hosted on Microsoft desktops. But, Microsoft’s is not the only operating system available.